Actally You can! The Quaran as highly stylized arabic calligraphy is one of the most common art forms in islamic areas. Huge geometric patterns and abstract designs woven from holy verses. These can be very beautiful. Think the equivelent of stained glass windows. Do to the no-idolatry clause in the Quaran/Bible literal pictures as art are frowned on.
Now if you were referring to tearing apart, or flushing of a prisoner's holy text as a way to humliate, dehumanize, and degrade the prisoner, who might be in a concentration camp with out a warrent or hope of a fair trial, as "art," then you are a sick little fucktard and should save that crucifix by drinking it dry.
While I rather agree with the reply before mine, let me try this one on.
Happy, calm, non-violent, introspctive, non-zelous religion is relativly boring. It doesn't move plots or provide an explanation for non-rational behavior on the part of "bad-guys." Thus it is of very little use to someone trying to produce an exciting, tension filled story.
A dangerous, brain washing, intolerant, violent, faith based, religion however makes a perfect foil for a protaganist. It covers a multitude of sins as the author/designer can attribute any outrageous action the "bad-guys" need to make to some obscure quirk of their faith.
Finally I think the authors are just being responsible. Religion is a very very powerful force, and must be handled with care. Being a self sustaining and propgating meme cluster, it has defenders and advocates of its own. It has it's own literature/novles/stories that portrays it in a positive light (Bible, Quran, Gita, Torah, Analects, Tao-te-jin etc) which are over all read far more than any other literature. I think those who are not carriers of a particular religious meme intuit that their needs to be a counter balance if if their own memes are to survive. History has shown again and again exactly how BAD a single dominant religion is for both a culture and its populous. So to help keep themselves and other safe they produce the other side of the story to help innoculate others.
Good people don't need religion as a reason to be good. They may find a version of religion that suits their temperment and morals, but their religious choice is a symptom of their nature, not the reverse.
However, a morally weak person could go either way. If they are lost and looking for guidance and they find a "good" religion then it might help them act morally and in accordance with their cultures norms. However if they are "weak" the faith that will probably apeal to them most is a "strong" religion - non compromising, demanding, faith based, assertive, popular, controlling and comprehensive. Once they bond with this meme they can have authorative answers, and be strong in the justification for their acts. As they are weak, and were drawn to the religion for its strength they will need to be reassured of its strength / expunged of their weakness by proving its strengh by proselytising / running inquisitions/ handing out literature/ burning heretics/ enacting legislation etc.
I'm not sure about patents, but IIT in Chicago does allow BSD licencing of software written on their paycheck. GPL/LGPL is a bit too dificult for them to get their head around so far... We DO release little stuff with the GPL|LGPL but big stuff seems to go BSD (if its going open source at all).
I've often pondered this issue actually. Ancient history was an unofficial minor of mine in U. I'm trying to imagine historians and archeologits a 1000 years from now trying to recover information from this and the next century... I have visions of there being this big blank spot in the record due to all the important stuff only being recorded in digital formats that are totally un-readable... or a post nuclear scenario where it all ends up blank What a strange view of our time they would construct when the only media that has survived would be metal and plastic advertisements and signs.
Hmm... I wonder how much of the random chinese spam IS coded disident info. Its like hiding your gold in a wheelbarrow full of manure. It would be almost imposible to find the one intended recpient in the midst of a millian nigerian scam letters. I guess a better analogy would be the classic spy cliche of putting a secret message in the classifieds.
Hmm which genisis story? There are 2 you know, by two different authors? Is this the one where the Dictatorial deity puts temptation DIRECTLY in front of them after creating them with the inclination for curiosity and indulgence in temptation? The story where he then lets his own creation the serpent (do angels have free will?) go down and tempt them and tell them its ok? After THAT setup, THEY get the blame for telling him to STFU? Where did the whole free will thing play in again? How were they to know good from evil if they had yet to eat the fruit?
Wipe the slate clean... hmm like the flood? That went well.
I have no problem with them BELIEVING what they want, but I do have a problem with them pushing what I believe is a dangerous and pernicious moral value set on others. I don't want my childeren taught that incest is a good idea in school, and I don't want them taught that worshiping an evil deity is a good idea, or that they should turn away from reason because the followers of an evil being are threatened by the "truth."
I despise Evil.
Bigotry is Evil When "religious" people are speaking out against homosexuals thay are doing EVIL. And as we all know the devil may quote scripture.
Ignorance and Blind Faith are Evil. When churches are speaking out for ignorance and against science, they are doing Evil.
When they are inducing poverty and suffering and abuse by denying women control over the reproductive system they are doing Evil.
When they continue the idea that there is a divinity out there judging, rewarding and punishing they are perpetuating the monstrosity of an idea that you get what you deserve. Why is it monsterous? Because it allows people to secretly to say to themselves, well they are just poor, or suffering, or sick, BECAUSE THEY DESERVE IT. I have a million dollars and they are eating out of the trash BECAUSE I'M a GOOD PERSON and They must not be. This is Evil.
I don't want to convert you, but I would like you to seriously examine your beliefs and see if you as a good person can still follow them.
I'm agnostic on a good day, atheist sometimes, buddhist or hindu when the mood strikes me. I've gone to temples and synagogs. I even pray when I'm helpless. There is a lot more out there then what you heard about in sunday school, and frankly a lot of it is much much better. I don't want you are anyone else to give up your faith, but I do want you and everyone else to take responsibility for it and the horrible horrible things it has led to. I feel compelled now and then to just point out that the "rightous" are just as bad if not worse than anyone else and have no lock on the truth.
We no longer live in a Christian Nation or a Christian world. It's mostly hindu and muslim, with a lot of people secretly practicing native chinese beliefs. When one says "God" its not a sure thing that everyone sitting at the table with you are thinking of the same bearded guy in a white robe. Its time the US wakes up to this. We can't teach (as another poster so beautifully described) creation via naval, creation by world cow licking from the ice and salt, creation by Great Buffalo, or Dead Titan, in school and you would be offended if they did. Any given sect of christians is a minority in this country. We will never be able to do a curriculum that suits them AND the muslims AND the hindus AND the NeoPagans, who all have equally valid beliefs and rights to how their children are taught. So scrap it. Keep It Out of the schools, the government, the laws. Let children grow up to be rational thinking creatures, and then when they are adults and can think rationally rather than being programmed by fear, let them decide if they want to believe in this or religion.
They won't let kids have sex ed in middle school but they are ok with telling them about something as dangerous as religion from the cradle? thats all wrong.
I am really happy for your Son. I am very happy for you that you did not lose him. I'm also very very happy for the millions and millions of years of evolution that led to such an incredible machine as the human body that can heal its self from injury. Praise your son for his will to live. If you believe in a "god" then curse it for allowing your son to have such an accident, or inflicting it on him. (far more records of JHV inflicting harm on his followers for tresspasses than healing them). What sort of deity would set up a world where your little boy would suffer like than and make you suffer in such fear for him? That is horrible! How could it almost take that chance away from your child? I would much much rather believe in chance than such an evil god:(
Maybe you follow a less pernicious diety? In, that case praise Vishnu or Diana.
No. If your god is perfectly good, perfectly knowing, and perfectly powerful, then it would want a perfect existance for you, would know how to do it while still preserving your free will, understanding of evil, etc, and would have the power to implement it. It did not. Its creations are flawed, its world is flawed - ergo IT is flawed.
Read up on Gnosticism - At least in some versions the idea is that the demiurge is sick/insane broken. If you consider the possibility then alot of things make more sense.
Read the old testament. The judeo-christian-muslim god is NOT a good being. It is a hateful, nasty, vengful, arrogent, little mountain god of the same pantheon as Baal, Istar ect. From day one it was suggesting genocides, running its people around in the desert for generations, sending snakes to bite them and all sorts of horrible thngs. If the patriarchs had been smart they would have dropped the ark and run.
As far as the Jesus character went.. dude he was NOT the messiah! He told his people he was comming back like next WEEK! Its been 2000 years, he is dead, not in heaven, not comming back. Was he a good man? probably. Was he the son of god? No. Could an evil flawed divinity like we have already discussed produce a viable heir to set things right? No, it would be as flawed as its creator.
If you MUST have some sort of religious crutch to prop your self up, please go become a buddhist, or hindu, or taoist, or wiccan for goodness sake. Your belief system will make a lot more sense and you will worship a deity that might have some shred of moral respecability to them. If you REALLY believe in the JHV god, then submit and become a muslim. Mohamed was the last guy to talk to JHV and they are at least sincere about it. (just don't have any daughters).
Belive me I have wrapped my head around it. I learned it, studied it, wrote papers on it, mulled it over, discussed it, and discared it as a broken and morally repugnant philosphy.
(*) Of course, there are some things that we must ultimately accept without proof; such as our perception of reality- if reality even exists, and is not an illusion. You can reject this, of course; but in rejecting it, you must reject *everything* around you as unproven, including your own thoughts.
Read about Buddhism. This is basicly the primary principle of the whole philosophical system. Life is an illusion and the only way out of the vicious cycle of birth, suffering, and death is to reject it entirely. Very compelling
Science will never present us with a peer-reviewed study proving once and for all that you should be good to your fellow man, and treat him like a brother. There are some excellent studies in biology regarding "the problem of altruism" and how on a species level it DOES make sense in helping propagate a subset of your own genetic material if not the whole.
Will the next economic theory show once and for all, that there is so much more to be gained if every child went to bed without hunger? That great things could happen if we ignored greed and lived lives unblinded by mindless pursuit of wealth?
Again there are a number of very good works on the problems of economic inequality in a world market.
These are things people figured out a while ago, the benefit of science and reason is that we now have much more compelling reasons to believe them than "some burning bush on a hill told this guy who spoke a language nobody has understood in a 1000 years."
Cry. Then pray to any relevant deity that the thumper be taken up to heaven at the soonest possible opportunity.
I think the proof that a benign power doesn't exist, or at least is not interested, is the current state of things. If such a being existed and cared about its creations, I doubt Africa, the Middle East, All of post Tsunami SE Asia would be in the state its in. (These being locations with a great concentration of very religious people).
So, you can't prove it doesn't exist, but you can prove that it is either powerless, helpless, disinterested or an asshole/malovent diety. In any of those cases I have no interest in it, and don't know why anyone else would either.
Is it possible to play without having a credit card?
In the US at least, they sell 3 month access "cards/gift-certificates" for 29.99. I'm not sure you can use them to register, but you can definatly use them instead of a credit card to pay.
I think the credit card thing is used as a tracker/identity verificatin method. *shrug* I wasn't too happy about it myself.
Thanks for the Review. Any recomendations?
on
Deploying OpenLDAP
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Thanks for the frank review!
Sounds like the book could be replaced with a few google searches.
Do you have any recomendations for a Good dead tree on OpenLDAP? I'm getting ready to do a small installation and would be very interested in intermediate reference work/howto/security and trouble shooting book
I'll second this one! NOT the annoying MtG card game style version but the ORIGNAL Jackson Games box set. Fabulous! All the coniving of Diplomacy, with more humor, and only an hour or 2 play time. Just can't recomentd Illuminati enough!
The long list of updates in the 2.6.11 kernel includes . . . updates to ACPI (define), DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure, which permits direct access to graphics hardware for X Window System users), ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, which provides MIDI and audio functionality to the Linux), SCSI (define) and the XFS high-performance journaling filesystem.
I recently ran into a bad data corruption bug with 2.6.8.(some debian specific patch number) where my NFS mounts of an XFS were corrupting files and doing block switching after we got to a certain fill level full on our raid5 arrays. Switched back to ext3 and all was well...
If anyone else knows anything about this I would be interested...
Please excuse me while I get this personal pet peeve off my chest.
WHY, do companies and stores think that NOT showing ID when using a credit card/debit card is something that people would want?
I Don't sign my cards. I write in bold letters on the back MUST SEE ID. Still only about 1 in 20 times am I asked for an ID, even when makeing a $50+ purchase.
And the debit cards. The advertising on them is insane. They have some celebrity come out and get asked for ID then say - "With our Check Card, you Never need ID" And how is this supposed to be a good thing? I'm supposed to be happy that it is even easier for someone who has stolen a card to go and clear out my checking account? Who the heck goes out with their credit cards, but skips their ID? Who the heck runs around without an ID in the first place? What, your going to go into your wallet or purse, take out the debit card, and leave your licence/ID in there?
With all the credit card fraud and identity theft gong on, why would anyone make it even easier to ruin your credit rating and entangle you in hours upon hours of sometimes futile effort to get it set straight?
Mind you I will screem like hell if somebody REQUIRES me to carry an ID all the time - but cash spends fine without any verification.
Um, Yeah. That was sort of the point. I was a scout from cubby till I turned 18 many years ago. That is _why_ seing BSA made me think of scouts first.
Finding my own transposition amusing, I thought I would do a humor post regarding the identical Acronyms for the to very different organizations. If you had read my post rather than just the title this would be pretty obvious.
I still have a great deal of respect for the boy scouts, and thought it was a great experience. However, having grown up and moved away from the small rural town of my origins I look back and find that some of the vaules and ideas they expouse are now less than comfortable to me. Their decision to exclude homosexuals from their organization really bothered me for a couple reasons. First it teaches discrimination, and second I think that a boy who is gay and trying to come to terms with it could really use the sort of safe, character building, confidence building learning experiences that the boy scouts provide.
Anyway, this discussion is REALLY off topic, so my apologies to the rest of the/. crowd.
First it was getting all homophobic, now the Boy Scouts of America have gone and become a shill for Microsoft!?!?! I'm burning my merit badges!
JK, but I swear when I first read the headline the first thing that popped into my head were the Scouts rather than the Buisness Software Alliance (as you say, the Microsoft Mafia Divison)
NIS works... but thats not the problem with it. The big problem is all the cleartext its pushing across the wire. If you do a ypcat passwd on a client machine, the server will send the equivalent of your shadow file unencrypted across the wire. Perhaps worse, scenario - someone brings in a laptop, unplugs one of your cluster, guesses your NIS "group" name, and uses the cluter members IP#. Bang, your NIS master happily gives it anything it asks for.
There is an old joke about NIS - Network Intrusion System.
Bad comparison. Driving and talking on the phone use two different types of thinking while talking and reading/writing both use your verbal brain.
I really enjoy listening to NPR while driving, however, comming from the television generation I have a very hard time just sitting and listening to talk radio, I fidget, tap my fingers and get distracted by things. - not enough stimulation of other senses.
A better test of your theory would be to sit down and do a pencil sketch of a doodle or hand copy a picture from a magazine while having the conversation on a "handsfree" phone. I think you would find (or at least I do) that the visual/physical work and verbal work compete little or at all.
I would concur and also add that the original poster should just not worry. When I was in mid highscool I got access to the local college's VAX through a dialup connection... and discovered IRC. (Internet Relay Chat - a world wide live chat room system that predates MSN or "the Web" as you might commonly think of it.) For several months I would get home from school and get online and hang out in chat rooms till time to sleep. And then I got a girlfriend, and got over it.
The interent and online socializing is absolutly facinating when you first find it... but it wanes in satisfaction for most people after a few months . That they are totally getting into it now is both normal and not something to be concerned about. If you are really lucky your kids will maintain this facination (to a lesser degree) and take it with them through their scholastic and professional careers and do quite well. It could be worse your kids could be getting involved with the bad crowds like jocks and cheerleaders.
Give them a serious talk about the dangers of online predators... not too serious or they will laugh at you, and then let them have at. Joining them is probably a good idea. Don't Spy! You will lose their trust.
Don't try to "manage" their online usage or you will just turn it into a forbidden fruit.
Relax. Kids do fine. The worst thing you can do is interfere.
Does it Rip CDs? I'm looking all over for a BSD/GPL/true freeware/ID3 lookup/win32 all in one digital music solution and I'm pulling my hair out.
At this point i'd even go for a good freeware/bsd/gpl CD ripper with a reliable id3 lookup capacity. Its getting the lookups so I can automate moving over my CD collection that is the pain right now.
I just did a quick "back of napkin" calculation based on stats from here http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm , and it looks like, if we treat the numbers from 2001 as an average (Not the right way to do it), then in the last 10 years more people in the US have been shot and killed by police officers than have died due to terrorist acts inside the country performed by non-citizens.
Now if you look at Drowning... Wow, about 10 times as many have died due to drowning than terrorism, and general "accidents" 30 times as many.
Lets spend $100,000,000,000 on the War against Accidents!
Slashdot Mirror
Actally You can! The Quaran as highly stylized arabic calligraphy is one of the most common art forms in islamic areas. Huge geometric patterns and abstract designs woven from holy verses. These can be very beautiful. Think the equivelent of stained glass windows. Do to the no-idolatry clause in the Quaran/Bible literal pictures as art are frowned on.
Now if you were referring to tearing apart, or flushing of a prisoner's holy text as a way to humliate, dehumanize, and degrade the prisoner, who might be in a concentration camp with out a warrent or hope of a fair trial, as "art," then you are a sick little fucktard and should save that crucifix by drinking it dry.
While I rather agree with the reply before mine, let me try this one on.
Happy, calm, non-violent, introspctive, non-zelous religion is relativly boring. It doesn't move plots or provide an explanation for non-rational behavior on the part of "bad-guys." Thus it is of very little use to someone trying to produce an exciting, tension filled story.
A dangerous, brain washing, intolerant, violent, faith based, religion however makes a perfect foil for a protaganist. It covers a multitude of sins as the author/designer can attribute any outrageous action the "bad-guys" need to make to some obscure quirk of their faith.
Finally I think the authors are just being responsible. Religion is a very very powerful force, and must be handled with care. Being a self sustaining and propgating meme cluster, it has defenders and advocates of its own. It has it's own literature/novles/stories that portrays it in a positive light (Bible, Quran, Gita, Torah, Analects, Tao-te-jin etc) which are over all read far more than any other literature. I think those who are not carriers of a particular religious meme intuit that their needs to be a counter balance if if their own memes are to survive. History has shown again and again exactly how BAD a single dominant religion is for both a culture and its populous. So to help keep themselves and other safe they produce the other side of the story to help innoculate others.
Good people don't need religion as a reason to be good. They may find a version of religion that suits their temperment and morals, but their religious choice is a symptom of their nature, not the reverse.
However, a morally weak person could go either way. If they are lost and looking for guidance and they find a "good" religion then it might help them act morally and in accordance with their cultures norms. However if they are "weak" the faith that will probably apeal to them most is a "strong" religion - non compromising, demanding, faith based, assertive, popular, controlling and comprehensive. Once they bond with this meme they can have authorative answers, and be strong in the justification for their acts. As they are weak, and were drawn to the religion for its strength they will need to be reassured of its strength / expunged of their weakness by proving its strengh by proselytising / running inquisitions/ handing out literature/ burning heretics/ enacting legislation etc.
I'm not sure about patents, but IIT in Chicago does allow BSD licencing of software written on their paycheck. GPL/LGPL is a bit too dificult for them to get their head around so far... We DO release little stuff with the GPL|LGPL but big stuff seems to go BSD (if its going open source at all).
I've often pondered this issue actually. Ancient history was an unofficial minor of mine in U. I'm trying to imagine historians and archeologits a 1000 years from now trying to recover information from this and the next century... I have visions of there being this big blank spot in the record due to all the important stuff only being recorded in digital formats that are totally un-readable... or a post nuclear scenario where it all ends up blank What a strange view of our time they would construct when the only media that has survived would be metal and plastic advertisements and signs.
Hmm... I wonder how much of the random chinese spam IS coded disident info. Its like hiding your gold in a wheelbarrow full of manure. It would be almost imposible to find the one intended recpient in the midst of a millian nigerian scam letters. I guess a better analogy would be the classic spy cliche of putting a secret message in the classifieds.
Dear Your_Mom,
Hmm which genisis story? There are 2 you know, by two different authors? Is this the one where the Dictatorial deity puts temptation DIRECTLY in front of them after creating them with the inclination for curiosity and indulgence in temptation? The story where he then lets his own creation the serpent (do angels have free will?) go down and tempt them and tell them its ok? After THAT setup, THEY get the blame for telling him to STFU? Where did the whole free will thing play in again? How were they to know good from evil if they had yet to eat the fruit?
Wipe the slate clean... hmm like the flood? That went well.
I have no problem with them BELIEVING what they want, but I do have a problem with them pushing what I believe is a dangerous and pernicious moral value set on others. I don't want my childeren taught that incest is a good idea in school, and I don't want them taught that worshiping an evil deity is a good idea, or that they should turn away from reason because the followers of an evil being are threatened by the "truth."
I despise Evil.
Bigotry is Evil
When "religious" people are speaking out against homosexuals thay are doing EVIL. And as we all know the devil may quote scripture.
Ignorance and Blind Faith are Evil.
When churches are speaking out for ignorance and against science, they are doing Evil.
When they are inducing poverty and suffering and abuse by denying women control over the reproductive system they are doing Evil.
When they continue the idea that there is a divinity out there judging, rewarding and punishing they are perpetuating the monstrosity of an idea that you get what you deserve. Why is it monsterous? Because it allows people to secretly to say to themselves, well they are just poor, or suffering, or sick, BECAUSE THEY DESERVE IT. I have a million dollars and they are eating out of the trash BECAUSE I'M a GOOD PERSON and They must not be. This is Evil.
I don't want to convert you, but I would like you to seriously examine your beliefs and see if you as a good person can still follow them.
I'm agnostic on a good day, atheist sometimes, buddhist or hindu when the mood strikes me. I've gone to temples and synagogs. I even pray when I'm helpless. There is a lot more out there then what you heard about in sunday school, and frankly a lot of it is much much better. I don't want you are anyone else to give up your faith, but I do want you and everyone else to take responsibility for it and the horrible horrible things it has led to. I feel compelled now and then to just point out that the "rightous" are just as bad if not worse than anyone else and have no lock on the truth.
We no longer live in a Christian Nation or a Christian world. It's mostly hindu and muslim, with a lot of people secretly practicing native chinese beliefs. When one says "God" its not a sure thing that everyone sitting at the table with you are thinking of the same bearded guy in a white robe. Its time the US wakes up to this. We can't teach (as another poster so beautifully described) creation via naval, creation by world cow licking from the ice and salt, creation by Great Buffalo, or Dead Titan, in school and you would be offended if they did. Any given sect of christians is a minority in this country. We will never be able to do a curriculum that suits them AND the muslims AND the hindus AND the NeoPagans, who all have equally valid beliefs and rights to how their children are taught. So scrap it. Keep It Out of the schools, the government, the laws. Let children grow up to be rational thinking creatures, and then when they are adults and can think rationally rather than being programmed by fear, let them decide if they want to believe in this or religion.
They won't let kids have sex ed in middle school but they are ok with telling them about something as dangerous as religion from the cradle? thats all wrong.
I am really happy for your Son. I am very happy for you that you did not lose him. I'm also very very happy for the millions and millions of years of evolution that led to such an incredible machine as the human body that can heal its self from injury. Praise your son for his will to live. If you believe in a "god" then curse it for allowing your son to have such an accident, or inflicting it on him. (far more records of JHV inflicting harm on his followers for tresspasses than healing them). What sort of deity would set up a world where your little boy would suffer like than and make you suffer in such fear for him? That is horrible! How could it almost take that chance away from your child? I would much much rather believe in chance than such an evil god :(
Maybe you follow a less pernicious diety? In, that case praise Vishnu or Diana.
Ahh.. the classic "God works in mysterious ways"
No. If your god is perfectly good, perfectly knowing, and perfectly powerful, then it would want a perfect existance for you, would know how to do it while still preserving your free will, understanding of evil, etc, and would have the power to implement it. It did not. Its creations are flawed, its world is flawed - ergo IT is flawed.
Read up on Gnosticism - At least in some versions the idea is that the demiurge is sick/insane broken. If you consider the possibility then alot of things make more sense.
Read the old testament. The judeo-christian-muslim god is NOT a good being. It is a hateful, nasty, vengful, arrogent, little mountain god of the same pantheon as Baal, Istar ect. From day one it was suggesting genocides, running its people around in the desert for generations, sending snakes to bite them and all sorts of horrible thngs. If the patriarchs had been smart they would have dropped the ark and run.
As far as the Jesus character went.. dude he was NOT the messiah! He told his people he was comming back like next WEEK! Its been 2000 years, he is dead, not in heaven, not comming back. Was he a good man? probably. Was he the son of god? No. Could an evil flawed divinity like we have already discussed produce a viable heir to set things right? No, it would be as flawed as its creator.
If you MUST have some sort of religious crutch to prop your self up, please go become a buddhist, or hindu, or taoist, or wiccan for goodness sake. Your belief system will make a lot more sense and you will worship a deity that might have some shred of moral respecability to them. If you REALLY believe in the JHV god, then submit and become a muslim. Mohamed was the last guy to talk to JHV and they are at least sincere about it. (just don't have any daughters).
Belive me I have wrapped my head around it. I learned it, studied it, wrote papers on it, mulled it over, discussed it, and discared it as a broken and morally repugnant philosphy.
(*) Of course, there are some things that we must ultimately accept without proof; such as our perception of reality- if reality even exists, and is not an illusion. You can reject this, of course; but in rejecting it, you must reject *everything* around you as unproven, including your own thoughts.
Read about Buddhism. This is basicly the primary principle of the whole philosophical system. Life is an illusion and the only way out of the vicious cycle of birth, suffering, and death is to reject it entirely. Very compelling
Science will never present us with a peer-reviewed study proving once and for all that you should be good to your fellow man, and treat him like a brother.
There are some excellent studies in biology regarding "the problem of altruism" and how on a species level it DOES make sense in helping propagate a subset of your own genetic material if not the whole.
Will the next economic theory show once and for all, that there is so much more to be gained if every child went to bed without hunger? That great things could happen if we ignored greed and lived lives unblinded by mindless pursuit of wealth?
Again there are a number of very good works on the problems of economic inequality in a world market.
These are things people figured out a while ago, the benefit of science and reason is that we now have much more compelling reasons to believe them than "some burning bush on a hill told this guy who spoke a language nobody has understood in a 1000 years."
Cry. Then pray to any relevant deity that the thumper be taken up to heaven at the soonest possible opportunity.
I think the proof that a benign power doesn't exist, or at least is not interested, is the current state of things. If such a being existed and cared about its creations, I doubt Africa, the Middle East, All of post Tsunami SE Asia would be in the state its in. (These being locations with a great concentration of very religious people).
So, you can't prove it doesn't exist, but you can prove that it is either powerless, helpless, disinterested or an asshole/malovent diety. In any of those cases I have no interest in it, and don't know why anyone else would either.
Is it possible to play without having a credit card?
In the US at least, they sell 3 month access "cards/gift-certificates" for 29.99. I'm not sure you can use them to register, but you can definatly use them instead of a credit card to pay.
I think the credit card thing is used as a tracker/identity verificatin method. *shrug* I wasn't too happy about it myself.
Thanks for the frank review!
Sounds like the book could be replaced with a few google searches.
Do you have any recomendations for a Good dead tree on OpenLDAP? I'm getting ready to do a small installation and would be very interested in intermediate reference work/howto/security and trouble shooting book
I'll second this one! NOT the annoying MtG card game style version but the ORIGNAL Jackson Games box set. Fabulous! All the coniving of Diplomacy, with more humor, and only an hour or 2 play time. Just can't recomentd Illuminati enough!
The long list of updates in the 2.6.11 kernel includes . . . updates to ACPI (define), DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure, which permits direct access to graphics hardware for X Window System users), ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, which provides MIDI and audio functionality to the Linux), SCSI (define) and the XFS high-performance journaling filesystem.
I recently ran into a bad data corruption bug with 2.6.8.(some debian specific patch number) where my NFS mounts of an XFS were corrupting files and doing block switching after we got to a certain fill level full on our raid5 arrays. Switched back to ext3 and all was well...
If anyone else knows anything about this I would be interested...
This is interesting, and the ALL CAPS and language do seem very governmentesque, but could you please site a source or provide other information?
Please excuse me while I get this personal pet peeve off my chest.
WHY, do companies and stores think that NOT showing ID when using a credit card/debit card is something that people would want?
I Don't sign my cards. I write in bold letters on the back MUST SEE ID. Still only about 1 in 20 times am I asked for an ID, even when makeing a $50+ purchase.
And the debit cards. The advertising on them is insane. They have some celebrity come out and get asked for ID then say - "With our Check Card, you Never need ID" And how is this supposed to be a good thing? I'm supposed to be happy that it is even easier for someone who has stolen a card to go and clear out my checking account? Who the heck goes out with their credit cards, but skips their ID? Who the heck runs around without an ID in the first place? What, your going to go into your wallet or purse, take out the debit card, and leave your licence/ID in there?
With all the credit card fraud and identity theft gong on, why would anyone make it even easier to ruin your credit rating and entangle you in hours upon hours of sometimes futile effort to get it set straight?
Mind you I will screem like hell if somebody REQUIRES me to carry an ID all the time - but cash spends fine without any verification.
Thanks.
Um, Yeah. That was sort of the point. I was a scout from cubby till I turned 18 many years ago. That is _why_ seing BSA made me think of scouts first.
/. crowd.
Finding my own transposition amusing, I thought I would do a humor post regarding the identical Acronyms for the to very different organizations. If you had read my post rather than just the title this would be pretty obvious.
I still have a great deal of respect for the boy scouts, and thought it was a great experience. However, having grown up and moved away from the small rural town of my origins I look back and find that some of the vaules and ideas they expouse are now less than comfortable to me. Their decision to exclude homosexuals from their organization really bothered me for a couple reasons. First it teaches discrimination, and second I think that a boy who is gay and trying to come to terms with it could really use the sort of safe, character building, confidence building learning experiences that the boy scouts provide.
Anyway, this discussion is REALLY off topic, so my apologies to the rest of the
First it was getting all homophobic, now the Boy Scouts of America have gone and become a shill for Microsoft!?!?! I'm burning my merit badges!
JK, but I swear when I first read the headline the first thing that popped into my head were the Scouts rather than the Buisness Software Alliance (as you say, the Microsoft Mafia Divison)
NIS works... but thats not the problem with it. The big problem is all the cleartext its pushing across the wire. If you do a ypcat passwd on a client machine, the server will send the equivalent of your shadow file unencrypted across the wire. Perhaps worse, scenario - someone brings in a laptop, unplugs one of your cluster, guesses your NIS "group" name, and uses the cluter members IP#. Bang, your NIS master happily gives it anything it asks for.
There is an old joke about NIS - Network Intrusion System.
Bad comparison. Driving and talking on the phone use two different types of thinking while talking and reading/writing both use your verbal brain.
I really enjoy listening to NPR while driving, however, comming from the television generation I have a very hard time just sitting and listening to talk radio, I fidget, tap my fingers and get distracted by things. - not enough stimulation of other senses.
A better test of your theory would be to sit down and do a pencil sketch of a doodle or hand copy a picture from a magazine while having the conversation on a "handsfree" phone. I think you would find (or at least I do) that the visual/physical work and verbal work compete little or at all.
I don't really care why, I just want open source drivers for those chipsets so I can automagically get wireless working on centrino laptops.
Excellent Comment.
I would concur and also add that the original poster should just not worry. When I was in mid highscool I got access to the local college's VAX through a dialup connection... and discovered IRC. (Internet Relay Chat - a world wide live chat room system that predates MSN or "the Web" as you might commonly think of it.) For several months I would get home from school and get online and hang out in chat rooms till time to sleep. And then I got a girlfriend, and got over it.
The interent and online socializing is absolutly facinating when you first find it... but it wanes in satisfaction for most people after a few months . That they are totally getting into it now is both normal and not something to be concerned about. If you are really lucky your kids will maintain this facination (to a lesser degree) and take it with them through their scholastic and professional careers and do quite well. It could be worse your kids could be getting involved with the bad crowds like jocks and cheerleaders.
Give them a serious talk about the dangers of online predators... not too serious or they will laugh at you, and then let them have at. Joining them is probably a good idea. Don't Spy! You will lose their trust.
Don't try to "manage" their online usage or you will just turn it into a forbidden fruit.
Relax. Kids do fine. The worst thing you can do is interfere.
Does it Rip CDs? I'm looking all over for a BSD/GPL/true freeware/ID3 lookup/win32 all in one digital music solution and I'm pulling my hair out.
At this point i'd even go for a good freeware/bsd/gpl CD ripper with a reliable id3 lookup capacity. Its getting the lookups so I can automate moving over my CD collection that is the pain right now.
I just did a quick "back of napkin" calculation based on stats from here http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm , and it looks like, if we treat the numbers from 2001 as an average (Not the right way to do it), then in the last 10 years more people in the US have been shot and killed by police officers than have died due to terrorist acts inside the country performed by non-citizens.
Now if you look at Drowning... Wow, about 10 times as many have died due to drowning than terrorism, and general "accidents" 30 times as many.
Lets spend $100,000,000,000 on the War against Accidents!